'Yesterday the announcement of the death of Felician Gess at the age of 78. His life's work appears to have consisted of a publication on the Saxon duke Ludwig the Bearded and his relations with Luther. But he was always an uptight Teuton and in 1920 objected to my appointment. Now my most intimate enemies in the university, the two Fosters with their three eyes and Don Quixote Gess are in Valhalla, and i hope I shall never see them again. But on the one hand; how petty and comical my battles and troubles of those days seem to me now; and on the other how deeply Hitler's attitudes are rooted in the German people, how good are his preparations for his Aryan doctrine, how unbelievably I have deceived myself my whole life long, when I imagined myself to belong to Germany, and how completely homeless I am.' .
Tuesday 5th April
An excerpt from 'I Shall Bear Witness -The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1933-1941' first published in German in 1995, translated into English by Martin Chalmers 1998.
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